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VooDooMoves: With black queen, queen rook, bishop and knight all pretty much stranded on the Q-side the position is ripe for a king hunt. Here's what I found (<TheAn> I set up the board correct this time but what I found is so weird you may wish to LOL again today.If I can't solve these puzzles at least I have the power to bring smiles to people's faces :)

19. Bh7+ Kh8 (Kf7?? 20. Qg6#) 20.Bxh6! and the threat is (21. Bxg7+ Kxg7 22.Qg6+ Kh8 23. Bg8! threatening mate on h7 and the two defenses, 23...Nf6 and 23...Rxg8, lose to 24. exf6 and 24. Qh6 # respectively) 20...gxf6 21. Qg6, threatening the same as before except with black to move and he has the strange defense 21...Qxb2+ (although it still fails). 22. Kg1 Nf6!? and now 23. exf6 Qxf6 allows black to trade and thereby relieve the pressure but...23. Rab1! Qc3 24. Rec1! This seems to win.

Material: Even. The Black Kg8 has 2 legal moves (including f7, on the same file as the White Rf1). White has a battery Qc2 and Bd3 controlling the weak light squares around Kg8 and able to check at h7. The activation of Qc2 is desirable, because the attack would be much more powerful if Qc2 and Bd3 were interchanged. The White Bc8 controls some complementary dark squares around Kg8 and in particular, attacks Ph6. The White Nf3 has little scope at present, but protects Pe5, which controls f6 and prevents the Black Nd7 from contributing to K-side defense. The White Ra1 requires activation, either by clearing Bc1 and reloading Rf1 or by a R-lift Ra3. The primary action will be on the K-side, where the White Q and Bs provide some local superiority, but any sacrificial combination should hinder the development of the Black Q-side and in particular, the bottleneck Nd7.

Candidates (19.): Bh7+, Bxh6

Candidate order is not very important, but 19.Bh7+ 20.Bxh6 is more forcing than 19.Bxh6 20.Bh7+.

19.Bh7+ Kh8 [Kf7 Qg6#]

20.Bxh6 gxh6 [Rxf3 21.Bxg7+ Kxg7 22.Qg6+ Kf8 23.Qg8#]

[else, drop a critical P without compensation]

21.Qg6 (threatening 22.Qxh6 23.Bg6+ 24.Qh7#)

As usual, Black has 3 types of response: counterattack, reinforcement, or retrenchment.

Counterattack is infeasible:

(1) 21…Qxb2+

<Here I went for the flashy 22.Rf2 but missed

22…Qxf2+ 23.Kxf2 Nxe5

My second choice was a lemon also:

22…Qxf2+ 23.Kh3 Nf3 24.Ng5 hxg5 25.exf6 <e5+>

Note: The game reply 23.Kh1 does not permit 25…e5+.>

(2) 21…Nxe5

<<>Here I went for 22.Qxh6 (threatening 23.Bc2+ Kg8 24.Qh7#) but missed 22…Ng4, removing the discovered check.>
Retrenchment is impossible because Kg8 cannot run, so reinforcement of Ph6 is the only remaining option:

johnlspouge: I would like to know the candidate order engines or humans prefer, and (in the case of computers, speculation on) how the preference of the order is determined. To forestall nugatory responses, I do understand that in the present case, move order does not matter much, but that just makes it an interesting example to me.

5hrsolver: In considering move order (19.Bxh6 or 19.Bh7) it may be useful to consider that black can refuse the Bxh6 sacrifice hence it may be better to sacrifice first before committing your other forces.

JohnBoy: <Jimfp ... after 23…Bd7 24 Bg8 Qxe5, 25 Qxh6+ is dead wrong because after 25...Kxg8, all white is left with is a draw by repetition.> Not quite. 26.Rxf6 and black can't easily defend h7. Death is imminent.

johnlspouge: < <JohnBoy> wrote: <Jimfp ... after 23…Bd7 24 Bg8 Qxe5, 25 Qxh6+ is dead wrong because after 25...Kxg8, all white is left with is a draw by repetition.> Not quite. 26.Rxf6 and black can't easily defend h7. Death is imminent.>

Toga II 1.3.1 evaluates 26.<Rxf6> as follows. (Humans can improve near the end of the full computer variation.)

MiCrooks: I found this quickly by feel as well, though I need to check. I saw both that I could transpose the first two moves and chose to play the less commital move first (Bh7+). I did miss the impact of the Queen check. It was incidental but it did force White to be more precise (as the rooks couldn't really come into play).

So didn't fully realize the solution but I would have played this over the board. I have a real weakness for sacking bishops into the opponents kingside!

MiCrooks: Oh and as to all of the computer talk, that Queen move actually hurts their ability to find the right line here. Most PC's do some selective trimming of their search trees to try to speed things up. Hiarcs I think is supposed to be very good at this.

Here the in between move with Qxb2+ adds to the tree as well as the negative evaluation. Both hurt any computers ability to find the right response. This is 20+ ply deep to find the right move, and very few computer setups can get that deep in any reasonable time frame.

If you go 7-ply into the variation (after Kh1) the computers start to see that things aren't so rosy. Go another two ply along the game line, even though it is the same line the computer thought was best, and it finally gets to where it sees Black is losing. But that is because the searches are going into what is effectively the low 20's at that point.

MiCrooks: On the Bd7 line White does walk a very fine line, but it is one that is pretty easy to find. I say easy because it is easy to see that the alternatives lose quickly! It is in positions where lots of things look possible that it is easier to go astray.

In the end Black has the same choice as in the game...drop his Queen on c2 and trade it for the Bishop or get immediately mated.

That final position is quite nice though, as illustrated above in Jim's third and final diagram.

I agree with your comments. The engines have no problems finding the continuations after the line is pushed some 6-7 plies forward, but somehow they must be pruning the leading moves and concentrate on what seems to be more promising side branches.

A pleasant surprise from Toga II 1.3.1, which I just added to my set of engines: in inifinity analysis, it did find 19. Bh7 and 19.Bxh6. After 19 plies (1h40m of runtime), its diagnosis of the two best lines is:

znprdx: Well I'm glad I came back to this a day later - the immediate 19.Bh6 seemed needlessly dramatic - and I doubt Serper ‘saw’ 25.Bg8 since technically Bxh7+ first is more forcing as <5hrsolver:> pointed out and <McCrooks> elaborated: "It is in positions where lots of things look possible that it is easier to go astray."
I think the key factor here would be time. After the provocative 19.Bh6 both...Bf5 and Rx[N]f3 are plausible spoilers. There must surely be something better than ...21Qxb2+ I’ll be back....but I notice that others have tried using computers: tsk-tsk Chess is played between people. Would a computer have ended up with a dead Queen Bishop?

However, it would appear from <MostlyAverageJoe>'s Toga II 1.3.1 analysis above that 19. Bh7+! Kh8 20. Bxh6! works as well or better.

An interesting aspect of the combination is an examination of the not-played side-line 23...Bd7, as first examined by <jimfromprovidence>. Jim indicates <after 23…Bd7 24 Bg8 Qxe5 25 Qxh6+ is dead wrong because after 25...Kxg8, all white is left with is a draw by repetition.> He goes on to demonstrate a fantastic White win after 23…Bd7 24 Bg8 Qxe5 <25. Rxf6!>. However, <johnboy> and <johnlspouge> indicate that after 23…Bd7 24 Bg8 Qxe5 25. Qxh6+ Kxg8 <26. Rxf6!> White is still winning.

In any case, this combination makes for a good study of a deep demolition of pawn structure mating combination.

Domdaniel: Nobody plays ...h6 in the French without considering the possibility of Bxh6 by White - especially when white, like Serper, was rated 2450 at the time of the game. This is conscious provocation by Barsov: actually encouraging Bxh6 because he believed his defences could hold, particularly with the neat move 22...Nf6. But white had an even neater one in 25.Bg8!!

Lasker and Steinitz have nothing to do with it. Forget aphorisms - this is raw calculation. In fact, if white had passed on the sac with, say, 19.Bb5, then Black has a promising exchange sac with 19...Rxf3 20.Rxf3 Nxe5, which is roughly equal.

Essentially, both players had to see the whole combination - with all its sidelines - at move 18/19. Black must have felt that the extra piece, the counterplay with ...Qxb2+, and the clever ...Nf6 was sufficient to take the risk. It's called heroic defence, and every French player knows it.

And no, they probably didn't spend much time on Lasker or Steinitz - who wouldn't have understood moves like 7...a5 or 8.a4 very well. But I'm sure they studied Botvinnik, Korchnoi and Vaganian.

Domdaniel: Interesting comments all round today, btw. Fritz 'finds' 19.Bxh6 at 18-ply, but rates it as equal, 0.00 -- it has to go another couple of plies before finding the win. Interestingly, it also rates the 19.Bb5 Rxf3 line as dead equal.

In cases like 19.Bh7+ vs 19.Bxh6, it's true that the sac might be refused, thus the check is more forcing. But, from an engine POV, the optimal lines transpose - hence there is absolutely no difference between them, and the selection order is irrelevant.

If analysing with an engine I always display 2 or 3 lines at least, so the problem of finding one key move is avoided. It's also useful in cases where one line is clearly better than the rest, as they can be eliminated.

Finally, I accept that *some* players would have played 19.Bxh6 'on instinct' and quite possibly found the rest of it, move by move. I just don't think that happened here.

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